Japanese Breakfast – Psychopomp

On Psychopomp, the debut full-length for Japanese Breakfast, Michelle Zauner romanticizes need, knowing precisely how futile it can be, as she howls on the record’s final song, to “cling to your sleeves ’til they’re like lacerated sails.” She drew from the masters of the form—Dolly Parton, Tammy Wynette, Loretta Lynn—for “the way they sing with over-exaggerated longing, wail on the inability to go on without someone.” Originally, recorded as a straight forward rock record, indebted to country and folk lineages, Michelle co-produced Psychopomp with Ned Eisenberg to give it what she calls “a psychotic pop sound.”